Romney Brothers Dish on Dad

A query such as, "Being a Mormon, does Romney campaign on Sunday?" gets a reply -- yes, Romney tries to make it -- while something like, "Have any of the five Romney brothers, all healthy heterosexuals well under 42, considered volunteering for military service in the Global War on Terror?" is ignored.

Mostly, you get to know more about the Romneys with every subsequent posting:

Everyone in the family -- Mitt, Ann and their five boys -- graduated from Brigham Young University. All sons are married; all but one of them have children. Romney, whose 10 grandchildren call him "Papa," does not have much of a sense of humor.

"The problem is that he thinks he's pretty funny and may try to break out some of his "Mitt humor" as the brothers call it," wrote Tagg before his dad's appearance on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno."

After U.S. News and World Report compared Josh to the young actor Ashton Kutcher, the brothers exchanged e-mails and came up with famous look-alikes for each other. On a blog entry titled "Separated At Birth," Josh's photo was next to Kutcher's, Matt's was next to the television journalist Bob Woodruff's and Tagg's was next to Booger's, the nose-picking, smart-mouthed pothead character in "Revenge of the Nerds."

On Mother's Day, the family's million-dollar manse in Belmont, Mass., about 20 minutes from Boston, was filled with lilacs, Ann's favorite. The flowers are an annual tradition.

It's all family, all the time, most of it simple, earnest G-rated fun. It's highly unlikely that the first blogger controversy of the race, when John Edwards's bloggers resigned over controversial comments they had made before joining his campaign, would spill over to Romney's site.

On the blog's most popular entry, Josh asked readers to name the family's newly purchased used RV, which he will be driving to the 99 counties in Iowa. Suggestions poured in, some funny, not all of them supportive.

"The Romnebego."

"Heck on Wheels."

"MittMobile."

"MormonMotion."

"Romn-i-bus."

"Less Talk Express."

The brothers settled on "The Mitt Mobile: A Five Brothers' Bus."

"I can't believe we didn't think of that one growing up. We actually nicknamed the car my dad used to drive the 'gray grunt,' " Josh wrote. "It was an old silver Chevy Caprice Classic that was full of dings and dents, a true lemon that he drove for years. I have Tagg searching for a picture right now."

Of course Tagg, who has authored the most entries, posted the photo.

"The blog does a really good job of humanizing the candidate," said Colin Delaney, founder and editor of Epolitics.com, a one-stop shop for tools and tactics of online campaigning. "I'm impressed by the consistency and the quality of the posts, which seem real and not scripted. Of course, this is politics, so of course at some level it's scripted. . . . But it feels sincere, and that's what counts when you're trying to reach an audience."